Forum:New Wikia navbar

Forums: Index → Community discussions → New Wikia navbar | Post

I'm here to inform The Sims Wiki that tomorrow, on December 3, Wikia will release their new "Wikia Navigation Bar" (the bar at the top) for all wikis. This change is compulsory, and use of JS or CSS in the MediaWiki pages to try and modify it are strictly forbidden!

The new navbar has been out for Community Central Wiki for months now, and if there's one thing I can really say negatively about the bar is how distracting it is. It's massive (although it has been shrunk slightly since its initial release) and it makes it extremely difficult to read an article, as the navbar is some serious eye candy, and my eyes, no matter how hard I try, hunger for it. Not to mention it follows you when you scroll, like some irritating stalker that's always in the same room with you, even if you're in a pit of lava.

Secondly, the bar's buttons are... ughh... clumsy, to say the least. The old design had a simple, neat line of drop-down menus that activated when your mouse moved over them, and the menus didn't take up half the screen as the new bar does. The buttons are now massive, sucking up screen space and distracting me from everything. Not to mention the user options buttons must now be clicked in order to trigger them, instead of simply cursoring over them. Viewing notifications takes another click, and so on. So many clicks for the same result... well, for a gigantic BFG that makes me feel like an ESL (English-as-a-second-language) student.

Thirdly, and I can't stress this enough, but the navbar clearly shows Wikia's apparent hardcore desire to change their branding from "Wikis" to "Wikias"(1). While Wikia apparently claims that "We also know that Wikia is only as good as its communities, so we're not going to force you into changes that you are uncomfortable with" (a lie), they at least aren't going to force wikis to change to something like the "Avatar Wikia", or "The Sims Wikia". Now say "Avatar Wiki" and "The Sims Wiki". Doesn't "Wikia" sound so awkward and clumsy to say? Disgusting... but now the navbar will say "Start a wikia" and "Search this wikia" (2). Speaking of the search bar...

Number 4: The search bar is now at the top of the dang screen, the old search bar has been replaced. And I just don't see how it's beneficial at all to have a search bar that follows you. Wikipedia has their search bar at the top-right corner of the screen and people have no trouble finding it. When did Wikia get the impression that a search bar wasn't obvious enough and decided to have it dangle in front of everyone like a carrot in front of a horse? Madness!

Now, Wikia seems determined to carry on with these changes despite strong community opposition and lots of criticism and feedback. They still haven't done anything about the notifications despite claiming to find a resolution three months ago. Now seems just about time to whip out TSW:SFP and give Wikia a ticket if they drive past our red light, but firstly, we'll probably need consensus to get Wikia to make the changes to fix this dang navbar and make it less awful than it is now.

Thoughts? //RANT OVER --I am k6ka ^{Talk to me!} _{See what I have done} 00:40, December 3, 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

There's nothing I can add here that wasn't already said in the initial discussion thread. That thread, for the record, was unanimously opposed to the new navbar. My opinion has not changed, but neither has the reality that this navbar is coming and we are totally powerless to stop it. -- LostInRiverview ^{talk • blog • contribs} 01:23, December 3, 2014 (UTC)

I use Monobook in my preferences, as do several other editors on another wikia wiki that I am an admin on. I wonder how it will affect the look of sites in Monobook: the navbar doesn't currently show up for me even when I visit Community Central. Simsilikesims (talk) 04:41, December 3, 2014 (UTC)

Monobook won't be affected by this change. ―ฬђ ^talk 04:55, December 3, 2014 (UTC)